Great Garden: Love of outdoors, appreciation for color, good compost, helpful books add up to impressive gardens at home of Holyoke teacher

Photos by Cori UrbanDorothy R. Albrecht plays with two of her family's dogs outside their home in Holyoke. She enjoys being outside and has created gardens around the house.

For Holyoke High School math teacher Dorothy R. Albrecht, a love of the outdoors, an appreciation for color, good compost and helpful gardening books add up to impressive gardens at her home.

She’s made the most of living in the Rock Valley neighborhood of Holyoke, using rocks from the 15-acre property to create raised beds for vegetable gardens and borders for some of her floral beds.

“You’ve got to do something with the rocks, and it’s nice” to use them for the gardens, she said.

The Albrecht family has lived here for 12 years, the only owners of their home; so she has planted her ideas and watched them grow into numerous gardens surrounding the house. Her husband and two sons helped, and her grown daughter is a gardener, too.

Dorothy Albrecht had a small garden at the family’s previous home in Chicopee on about a quarter acre, but “when we moved here I went totally over the edge,” she said of her gardening.

With the help of a large library of gardening books, she planted, replanted and planted some more.

Campanula superba, commonly called clustered bellflowers, grow in the "purple and pink" garden in front of Dorothy Albrecht's home.

“Anything anybody ever said attracts hummingbirds or butterflies, I plant it,” she said, noting she likes to have something blooming in each garden throughout the growing season.

Albrecht enjoys sharing the bounty of her gardens with friends, whom she said now have beautiful gardens, too. “It’s fun to give” plants away, she said.

Albrecht, who worked as an engineer until she was 35, had a secretary who was a gardener and often talked about her flowers and plants; that fostered Albrecht’s nascent interest.

Irises grow in front of the Albrecht home.

She has organized her gardens in great measure by color: Flowers with vivid colors – yellow, orange and red – are farther from the walk, ,while a perennial garden near the house boasts pinks and purples, and a “white garden” sits by the front door.

“I like to be outside,” she said, so gardening is a perfect hobby, one that works well with her school schedule. In the spring she works in the gardens for eight to 10 hours a weekend; that time is reduced to two or three hours later in the season.

“My gardens are so well established and big (that) I find I don’t have to weed as much,” she said.

Some of the gardens border the woods, and it is there that her husband, Rob, makes compost for her from the organic matter on the property. “It’s garden gold,” she said.

Photos by Cori UrbanDorothy R. Albrecht stands in the yard of her Holyoke home. Her garden area borders the woods.

The family has two grown dogs and a puppy, and, though the older animals are good about staying out of the gardens, the pup “is a work in progress,” Albrecht said.

Of all her flowers, the penstemon is her favorite. “I like pink, and hummingbirds love it,” she said. “And, it’s a challenge. You have to be careful with it and give it compost. And, don’t let anybody crowd it.”

Most of her gardening is organic, and she meticulously picks bugs off her plants while relying on “beneficial bugs” like ladybugs to naturally keep pests at bay. “I truly believe there is an organic balance that works better than yucky chemicals,” she said.

A reptile ornament watches over one of Dorothy R. Albrecht's gardens.

Dorothy R. Albrecht

Albrecht likes to keep her flowers outdoors and admits she has a difficult time cutting them and bringing them into the house. “I like them right there,” she said, nodding to white and yellow irises next to the garage.

Her plants seem to like it right there, too, where they are flourishing. 